November 06, 2016

Science Fiction Sunday 414

P-51 Dragon Fighter is a 2014 movie that's directed by Mark Atkins. I thought his name was familiar and sure enough I had seen his Asylum movie Merlin And The War Of The Dragons fairly recently. It was pretty poor. He works for The Asylum a lot. He's responsible for directing that company's Princess Of Mars and Battle For Los Angeles. Mark is often a cinematographer and editor. The movie is set in World War II and the German's have gotten hold of some dragon eggs and gotten robed women to manipulate them mentally and with song. The dragons fight the fighter planes and ground troops effectively. Rommel doesn't want the dragon's to exist because he believes a prophecy that says the dragons will destroy the world. He opens a door for the Allies bomber mission to take out the nest and kill all the unborn dragons.

It's a technically well made video that fails, like efforts from The Asylum often do, in the CGI. It's their weakest link. I have to admit that I like the idea of swastika wearing Nazi dragons and I also have to admit that that dragon in the screen capture just isn't that great. The effects look even poorer during the night scenes with the dragons and P-51s. Apparently the planes used in t he film were the wrong planes. They used the P-51D's when they should have been the P51A's. I don't know if that's right, it was on a forum on the movie's IMDb page, but I know people are often anal about that sort of detail so it could be true. I also know that they wouldn't have had a black pilot in the group which the movie depicts. Still there's dragons so you can't expect historical accuracy. All in all not a great film but sort of watchable. I helped it along by fast forwarding some of the dull parts. It scores a 2.8 on the IMDb but I gave it a 3. Mostly for the swastika's on the dragon's wings.

Lifeform is another movie from Amazon Prime. A space probe has returned to the Earth and it brings something back. It's a 1996 movie written and directed by Mark H Baker. It's Mark's only director job. He also wrote the story for Flight Of The Navigator. He has no other credits on the IMDb. The story is about the Mars lander returning to Earth with an alien life form on it. It gets out of the lander and into the base. The scientists want to capture the critter and the military guys aren't too keen on that especially after the critter shows it's got some defenses. Men die. It's much better than the previous film but still not much more than barely average. It's got a kind of weak ending which I read online was due to running out of money near the end of production. That sort of thing happens. It's not something I would feel I need to see again. I did like the critter somewhat.

On The Shoulders Of Giants is a 2012 British low budget film that cost $6180 to make. That's pretty cheap, huh.The director is Kenneth D Barker. The movie is set about 300 years in the future and there is space travel and alien contact. A ship with a new space drive is on a maiden voyage. There first mission is to track down the Leviathan, a ship that used an earlier version of the same drive. It got lost 15 years earlier. They have some trouble with their ship along the search but they do luck onto the Leviathan. It's not a bad story but the script has some so-so dialog. There's a lot of cheap looking CGI and weak visual effects. I got bored after a while and started fast forwarding when it got dull. It's a 112 minutes and it could have been cut by 20 minutes and still work well. The movie hasn't had 5 votes at the IMDb so it didn't have a rating yet. I gave it a 4 because I thought a 3 was a bit low. It's got a good idea but a weak execution.